Anthropology is the study of humans as individuals and members of society. "Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the scientific of the humanities."

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

What will be your Legacy to Anthropology

What will your or mine legacy be for future anthropology students and the profession? As a member of the 4th generation (1960s - 1980s) of American
anthropology now
transitioning into retirement, I ponder these questions:

What do I do with my files and data accumulated over 50 years of
academic and applied work?

Should I just throw it all away or should I donate it to
some archive for "lost" or "gray" anthropology? And where will that be?

Is there any "auto-ethnographic" value in
these files that might contribute to the present or future development of
anthropology and the profession?

Why ask such questions, you might
ask? As a graduate student I ran across a copy of a dissertation written by
Panchanan Mitra, a student of Clark Wissler at Yale in the 1920s, who later became an early founder
of Indian (the country) anthropology. He observed as far back as1933 that
anthropology is a sub-culture of Western culture. As he states:

Anthropology
... is the science of man, but it is also a trait of European civilization and
its point of the view is that of the European observing the rest of mankind. So
the growth of the science is intimately bound to the knowledge and outlook of
Europe (1933:1)

American anthropology is a
sub-set of that tradition. As Mitra (1933) stated:

Our
regional study of science in America has shown the rise of anthropology here
from the science of the America Indian, beginning with the discovery of the New
World in 1492, and the theological speculation arising there from. Thus it has
been eminently objective and regional from its very start. Philology, Geology,
Prehistoric Archaeology and still later evolutionary Biology only modified its
outlook. Its museum methods, its German geographical lead, and its close
association with the remarkable development of Experimental Psychology and
Social Science, mark America Anthropology by the history of its experience as
distinct from the anthropology of Europe. (Mitra 1933: 211)

One can conclude that
anthropology, like every other scholarly or scientific discipline produced by
Western Civilization, is worthy of study in itself. Further, it can be subjected to the
same anthropological treatment one might apply to any other intellectual or
cultural tradition. As such, anthropology must become reflexive, and
the anthropologist must include him or herself as actors as well as
observers in their studies. This applies to all anthropologists, but especially to the ethnographer. As a participant in the society one studies, the ethnographer comes an accomplice to the event
she/he reports in the ethnographic context. It is the subjective role which
provides both a depth of emotional response to the event and a narrower focus on
its meaning than one obtains from the observer role.

In recent years, one new research avenue in
ethnographic research is auto-ethnography. This is a reflexive approach which
raises some very interesting and challenging issue for the discipline of
anthropology and the ethnographer. Auto-ethnography is a process that
formalizes the process of including the field worker as “an accomplice” to the
events taking place in the society and culture at the time and place being studied. Chang (2009) in
her AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AS METHOD Developing Qualitative
Inquiry
includes a range of techniques and products from journaling and diaries, to
personal essays and presentations as methods for recording one's reflections on
one’s experience in the field, both as the observer and as the participant.
These sources can then be used to study the role of the professional
anthropologist in context and evaluate their impact on anthropology and the
profession. It is here where the anthropologist describes and reflects candidly
upon the role of Self (the ethnographer's individual Self) in their role as
observer as the witness to and the recording
instrument for the social and cultural behavior of the Other.

Over the
last 50 years, there has emerged a split in American anthropology between those
who pursue the traditional academic teacher and sometimes researcher roles,
and the social activist/practitioner and sometimes policy researcher roles. The
former has
adopted the institutional incentive system of the academy which rewards those who
pursue the academic career of research, teaching and service, They are expected to contribute to the academic, or basic research literature, through an
institutional structure designed to promote research and publication. At the same time, it punishes the latter who opt for the practitioner role which is based on a reward system of client service, policy
research and evaluation and consulting.

As a
result of the institutional structure, academic anthropology has become nothing more
than another academic discipline, limiting itself to the fads and fashion of
the academy and research funding communities. Its institutional focus on basic research
and publication has created an elitism reflecting the structure of the
American post-secondary system as a whole of which it is a part. In the process, it condemns
thousands of students and graduates to a professional caste system.Through this internal status system, an
informal, mandated path to professional acceptance and recognition has evolved. Those who fail to follow the path are shuts out of the
opportunity to do meaningful research and/or to publish it. Here the clientele
for the academic product is the disciplinary elite who through a peer review process impose standards designed to defend the prevailing theoretical paradigm(s). The system of academic hierarchy prevents many
from ever making a meaningful contribution to the discipline through the
traditional hierarchy of affiliation (e.g. Hurlbert, Beverley McElligott 1976, Rogge, 1976, Roose, Kenneth D., and C.J. Anderson 1970 )

This
situation was made worse for those who choose to apply their insights drawn from anthropology
to the development of policy solutions to social problems or to actively seek out and find innovative
products that are solutions to a need in the marketplace. Here the incentive system
is oriented toward the production of practical applications for a non-academic clientele.
The rewards are not based on publications nor academic status, but rather on
career advancement within the institutional structure, increased income and one's
reputation as a problem solver and effective administrator of people and
programs. Often what is produced is the proprietary product of the client, and not the practitioner. The lessons learned and made available to future generations from
these experiences are rarely available to the discipline and fall into the category of the discipline’s gray literature,

Gray
literature, in anthropology, is that vast body of information and observation
made by anthropologically trained individuals that has been produced to achieve
a specific, often limited or proprietary purpose, for a non-academic public, private
client or specific audience. Such materials are often time sensitive, contextually
limited, problem specific, and politically or subjectively biased to reflect the employer's interests. Yet, they also can provide an insightful
glimpse into our understanding of the institutions that produced them.(e.g. Nader, Laura 1972)

In the
tradition of anthropology, these materials are as valuable as the oral
histories collected by the 19th and early 20th century
ethnographers. Those oral histories attempted to “salvage” what was left of the
“native” or “indigenous” cultures that were undergoing rapid acculturation,
assimilation and/or extinction brought on by Western cultural expansion and
imperialism. Today, these records are a valuable resource for the
ethnohistorian and our understanding of cultural change.

In the
academic debate between the proponents of scientific vs. humanistic anthropology,
history has played and does play a crucial role. A historical dimension is a necessary condition in the development of
an anthropological theory of cultural dynamics. Unlike most other subject that mankind seeks to
understand, human events are always unique on the individual human level. Such
events happen once and only once. They can’t be replicated in the experimental
sense that physics, chemistry, or biology can repeat events. Human cultural events can only be recorded by witnesses to the event at the time and place of the event.

In the
Western tradition, ethically, morally and legally, the researcher should not
and cannot experiment on another human being without that the subject’s
permission. This does not mean that humans do not use other human beings as
guinea pigs. Such research must respect the limitations that
the rule of “informed consent” imposes upon the researcher. Another way such research can take place is when the
researcher and authorities dehumanize their subjects, such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiments using American Blacks or the Nazi WWII experiments on Jews as
subjects, so that the subject’s humanity is passively ignored or formally
denied.

Ethnography
is even more restrictive regarding experimentation on moral, philosophical, and practical
grounds. The ethnographer is ethically bound by the profession to leave the subject
community in a state that would, as much as reasonably possible, not prejudice a
future researcher's chances of coming back and be welcomed to study the same group. On a practical
basis, this ethic makes the reflections and recordings of the field ethnographer’s
personal experience even more valuable to the interpretation of the field data
he/she has gathered and for preparation of others to go into the field.

The field experience can be treated as the observation of a natural experiment. The
ethnographer’s observations become the record of the natural experiment that takes
place when the Stranger (the ethnographer) comes to live and study the Other (the subject). The auto-ethnography is the
record of the context in which the Stranger is transformed from the status of Stranger
to the status of “not quite One of US” as seen from the Other’s point of
view.

The
challenge as a practitioner is that we are defined initially by the Other’s status
structure. We are hired or engaged for a position in an established status network. That
network exists in the institution(s) that our client controls and interacts with. This
is a reversal of the tradition observer/participant role of the academic
researcher.

The
academic researcher starts from the position of observer. Beginning by studying
the literature on the topic, the culture, and context of the proposed research,
the researcher arrives at the site as the Outsider/ Observer and Stranger. He
or she becomes, to the extent permitted by the subject, a participant in the society and experiences the culture only after being accepted by the Other. The ethnographer experiences this acceptance from the point of view of the status position assigned to him/her by the Other. In order to
better observe the natural experiment that is his/her focus of study the ethnographer must play the role expected of one assigned to that status. Mead’s study of adolescent girls in Micronesia reflect the interaction between the
Observer and the Participant status and role as seen from the researcher and
subject points of view.

On the
other hand, the practitioner becomes the participant first by taking a job (a status) with an employer or client. He or she must do so if they wish to apply their anthropological insight to the job in order to become a
better and more effective observer in the institution. Before he/she can
become the observer, the practitioner must begin by demonstrating the skills called for in the job. One’s success as a practitioner anthropologist begins with his/her technical skills and are expanded by how these are informed by a holistic integration of these with the observations and understanding of system in which the job is a part. The
observer role is a means for establishing the legitimacy for an observer or
advisory status within the client social network.

As an
anthropologically trained observer, the practitioner is prepared to evaluate
his/her role in a holistic sense. He or she is able to reflect more deeply on
the meaning of his/her place in the institution as well as the institution’s
mission. Such reflections when recorded and documented become part of the gray literature that constitutes
the corpus of autoethnography. Unlike the literature search done by the
academic prior to entering the field, the auto-ethnographic process begins when one
enters in the field and is completed only after leaving the field, if done at
all. It is the personalized 'administrative" record of the field work prepared by the field worker.

As a
product of the participant role, these internal observations by the
practitioner can be incorporated into the preparation of future anthropologists working with the Other. They can form a basis for the later literature review by the academic before going into the field. The gray literature can also be treated as part of
the data used in evaluating the natural experiments that are used as the basis of a scientific
anthropology.

The
problem we face today is that much of this data is being lost to the discipline. It is being lost
because there is no formal organized structure for acquiring, evaluating,
archiving and retrieving these data. The proliferation of the practitioner role
has opened up tremendous opportunities for anthropology. But these opportunities exist only as
theoretical and pedagogical potentials. Unless the profession recognizes and addresses that potential in time, these data will lost forever.

1 comment:

There is here an hegemonic bias for 'participant' 'descriptive' ethnography as a narrativeistic 'one man show' (a colonial heritage), obliterating comparative research using instruments of research that allows the production of transcultural scientific models based on the test of questions and statistical conclusions. In that hegemonic setting, you are 'forgetting' works as Child training and personality: a cross-cultural study (J. Whittig & I. Child, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1953), Social Character in a Mexican Village (Erich Fromm & Michael Maccoby, Englewood Cliffs; Prentice Hall, 1970), Cultures and Organizations. Software of the Mind (Geert Hofstedde, London: McGraw-Hill, 1991) or Towards an Anthropology of Identity Processes (J. Bastos, Lisbon: Colibri & FCSH-CRIA, 2013.

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About Me

I am a professional applied anthropologist who applies a holistic perspective to the art and science of business and life coaching. I believe that your life is your business and your business is your life. Managing both requires understanding and balance, that is, a centrist pragmatic approach to life's problems. My motto is:"You can tell whether a person is clever by their answer; you can tell whether a person is wise by their question."